Fried speaker comparison

I have a pair of Q/3's now that have been in constant service for since 1988. I had the woofers re foamed and they sound like new to my old ears. I used to sell Fried's for a living and grew to really love the sound they reproduce. I agree with the guys above about the sweetness of the Betas and improvement that comes from adding a sub and crossing the Betas over at 80 or higher hertz. I am using a set of Bud's SM subs with Carolina Audio SM3s in my main system now and love it crossed over at 120 hz.
Back to the point the A/3 & Q/3 sound very, very similar in most situations. The A model has a bit lower bass response mostly due to the slightly larger cabinet than the Q. Fine products designed by a cool man (R.I.P. Bud). The C model monitors are awesome in any version you can find. I have owned and overhauled a few pairs. The crossovers are not much to speak about for parts quality, true. I had very good results rebuilding a set of crossovers in the C/3s model that I had matched with the o/4 sub. The rebuild was Cardas wires, Silver Saulder, & MIT caps bench tested to match each other, and removed the fuse. Bud liked the sound when I took them to his house to hear the mods and so did I. Let us know how happy you are with which ever pair you end up with.

I noticed the Q3s listed for sale here yesterday went in a jiffy. I considered pulling the trigger, but the opportunity was gone before I knew it.
-Bob

They were gone in a jiffy 'cuc old Schubert bout dropped his dentures when he saw them,just got back from mailing my MO at the Post Office.

Nmmusicman, it would not surprise me if your issue was in the wire you employed.

Several of us, including Bob (Rfogel8) have upgraded (and reengineered) Fried crossovers with stellar result. There are a lot of places you can go wrong in speaker when it comes to the crossover. Often, it's the intent in trying to upgrade too much (better coils with larger AWG/lower resistance that trow off the crossover points, harsher sounding capacitors and resistors, etc.) where things break down. Crossovers are jut one of those things one has to learn the hard way of trial and error and making a whole lot of "mistakes" along the journey.

As Joe(Trelja) mentioned, upgrading passive parts in a crossover doesn't necessarily guarantee better sound. Perhaps the "major leap forward in resolution" and "accuracy" was pointing out weaknesses elsewhere. Then again, replacing inductors with equal value but different AWG/DCR may change the crossover point making the speaker sound brighter and more aggressive.

With Bud's(or anyone else's) first order series crossovers, there are a minimum of passive parts and everything matters. Say you go from a junky 18 or 20AWG coil to a 12AWG Goertz to provide maximum protection for a tweeter, you will hear big differences.

Joe and I have a friend who designs first order series crossovers for the "C" cabinets. After selecting the drivers he wants to use and the optimal crossover point based on computer modeling, he then goes with good quality coils, caps and resistors(if used). Then he spends many hours/days voicing the speaker by making small incremental changes to the values of the passive parts. As Joe said, sometimes it's "trial and error" but, like fine tuning a cartridge, when you get it dialed in, it's worth the effort.

My "C" satellites use the newer OW-4 Hiquphon tweeter which is a huge step up from the old OW-2 with ferrofluid that Bud used to use. The midrange driver is a pricey but excellent ScanSpeak and the entire external series crossover consists of one Mundorf Silver/Oil cap(soon to be replaced with Dueland Cast) and two Goertz 12AWG inductors; no resistors anywhere! Add in the matching subs, good down to 20 Hz, and as my designer friend Joel will tell you, we'll put this system up against anything on the planet.